Qwestion on white balance

[Grandpaw]

I wanted to take some night pictures of some homes that have the orange colored street lights and I was wondering if anyone knew off hand what the white balance or "K"setting would be? I will measure the white balance with my camera but just thought someone here might know the "K" setting so I can try it also. Thanks, Jeff

[SmartWombat]

Orange street lights are weird.
They emit specific colour lines in the spectrum, rather than having a spread of colours that equates closely to a temperature.

[Grandpaw]

Thanks PAul. I think I will take a big white card with me on my next outing so it can be measured and see how well that works, Jeff

[another view]

Sounds like High Pressure Sodium lamps, which are 2100K. The light they put out is light yellow and maybe even a little pink. Like Paul says, the quality of light is very poor so even if you can set the WB that low it still might not be what you want (even assuming no other ambient light). Custom WB is definitely the way to go unless you're shooting RAW.

There is also Low Pressure Sodium which is amber in color but pretty uncommon in most areas in the US. It's used around astronomical observatories because the light can be filtered out easily, but it's really hard to see under this light.

For the quality of light from HPS, it's about a 20 CRI (color rendering index). CRI is a scale of 0 - 100, with 100 being "perfect" or in real life, incandescent light. LPS is a big zero; it's completely monochromatic like living in a black and white (well, orange and white) world!

[Grandpaw]

Thanks for your reply. I am going to play around with the pre- set settings but next time I will take along a white card and just measure it, Jeff

[livin4lax09]

orange lights are tough. We used to have them in our indoor track at school. After many attempts to correctly balance them I came out with a couple red balances, yellow, and a green. I ended up just grayscaling the images.

[Ron Kruger]

I'm very interested in this thread, also. Last night I tried to take a picture of a big buck feeding under the security light in my back yard, not really expecting much from it. All the pix had a heavy yellowish/amber cast to them, which I expected. I improved it some in PS, but it can't be salvaged as a color shot. I knew at the time of shooting that to get a passable image, I would have to adjust the white balance, and maybe even the color scale, but I didn't have time to mess with it, or really know what to do.
I was also shooting through a window, with light bouncing off it, which no doubt degraded this image considerably, but it was cold, and I didn't expect much anyway. But, if I can figure out how to shoot under this security light, I'll leave the window open on warmer nights and try to get a usable shot of this really big, nocturnal buck.

[another view]

That's just what you get with High Pressure Sodium lighting (Low Pressure Sodium is really uncommon, and a dark orange like the color of a tangerine). It's a really low quality light made for security purposes and puts out a lot of light based on the wattage - so it's very energy efficient (more than compact fluorescent).

But - it doesn't work well for photography. Like mentioned above, if you can't get the colors where you want them, you'll have to convert to B&W. With a shot in complete darkness other than HPS light, chances are this will be the case. With a skyline type shot at dusk (a little dark blue still left in the sky), you might be better off.

[freygr]

"High Pressure Sodium lighting (Low Pressure Sodium is really uncommon, and a dark orange like the color of a tangerine)"

Just remember the light given out is the spectrum of sodium. You can't get a color photo from these light sources as there is not any green or blue light to sense.

[another view]

Right - LPS is strictly monochromatic. It's like looking at the world with a black and white TV, except it's orange and white. Very odd. Coincidentally, it's great for monochromatic security cameras. You have absolutely no idea if the car next to you is burgandy, navy blue, dark green or brown.

HPS is much better but still a long ways from the quality of light we're used to seeing and photographing.